AKIPRESS.COM - Somalia's government said on Monday about 200 or more Somalis may have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to cross illegally to Europe, many of them teenagers, when the boat they were on capsized after leaving the Egyptian shore, Reuters reported.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella had said earlier on Monday that several hundred people appeared to have died in a new tragedy in the Mediterranean, after unconfirmed reports spoke of up to 400 victims of capsizing near Egypt's coast.

More than 1.2 million African, Arab and Asian migrants have streamed into the European Union since the start of last year, many of them setting off from North Africa in rickety boats that are packed full of people and which struggle in choppy seas.

"We have no fixed number but it is between 200 and 300 Somalis," Somali Information Minister Mohamed Abdi Hayir told Reuters by telephone when asked about possible Somali deaths in the latest incident.

One year ago, an estimated 800 migrants drowned off the Libyan coast when the fishing boat they were travelling in collided with a mercantile vessel that was attempting to rescue them - the most deadly Mediterranean shipwreck in decades.

Egyptian, Italian and Greek officials had earlier been unable to confirm the report of a new sinking.

A U.N. refugee agency official told Swiss broadcaster SRF he knew of 40 survivors from what appeared to be the same incident.

"We know there are 40 survivors and that as many as 460 people may have been on the boat who sailed from Egypt," the UNHCR's Beat Schuler told the broadcaster in what it said was a report from Malta.